Creating a Pattern

I am creating my first proper pattern. I don't mean the basic tinkering that everyone does, but the actual starting from scratch with NOTHING to help me. It is slow going but am quite proud of the progress so far.

This leap in my knitting career has been brought about by my true loathing of the Fair Isle Tank Top that I have been doing for college. This was a huge project that I would never wear and would take forever. I decided that what I needed to do was find a nice small pattern that I could knock up quickly and get the thing over and done with. I have spent DAYS looking at Ravelry patterns and could not find anything that fit my requirements i.e. DK wool, small, free, not hugely patterned, not too simply patterned. I know I was probably being overly fussy but I just could not find anything I wanted to make. Then I remembered a messenger bag that I had as a teenager. It was made in cotton but it was fair isle. I loved that bag so much it eventually died a slow and lingering death. This bag inspired me. I decided that "surely it's not THAT hard to make a bag pattern". I don't know if it is too hard or not yet, but I can tell you that so far it is going well.

I started off designing the pattern using a cross stitch design program. This enabled me to create a fair isle pattern that struck a balance between complexity and simplicity that suited me. It was designed with the wool, that I had already bought, in mind and I feel it works well with these colours.



This is what I have knit so far. I decided to knit in the round and this has made a huge difference in my knitting. The stitches are not all compressed together and I can see what I am knitting. The floats are much looser than previous attempts at fair isle and the speed I am knitting is much quicker. I have also used stitch markers at each repeat of the pattern, so when I get distracted I can easily find my place again. This has eased my progress quite significantly.



As this project progresses I am going to keep track of what I am doing and try and write up the pattern. I don't think anyone will want to use it, but I think creating a pattern will be a very valuable exercise.

In addition to this fair isle project, I am trying to crack on with Christmas presents. I will post the presents after Christmas as I don't want to spoil any surprises!